On May 1, 1960, Captain Francis Gary Powers received orders to begin a reconnaissance mission in a U-2 spy plane. A Soviet missile hit and downed his plane. The Soviet Union recovered the wreckage and captured Captain Powers. Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union had shot down a spy plane flying over its airspace.
Powers’s orders, if his plane was compromised, were to activate a self-destruct mechanism that would prevent the Soviets from discovering its true purpose. Not believing that Captain Powers survived the espionage mission, Eisenhower gave the order to proceed with releasing this cover story.
NASA announced that a U-2 plane running a joint NASA-USAF Air Weather Service mission went down in Turkey. The pilot had reported oxygen problems. Later, on May 7, 1960, Khrushchev revealed that not only did they have the plane, mostly intact, but also that the pilot survived.
This document was identified by teachers in our Primarily Teaching 2017 Summer Workshop at the Eisenhower Library.
